#TBT//#StorySundaySeries3.8

Tasha held her breath. Waiting for Kingston to burst out in rage, to cuss her out, and to toss her out of the house into the cold because she just told him he wasn’t the father of the baby.

“Joseph wasn’t the father either…” Kingston whispered back. He winked at Tasha and told her, “I’d like to be the father, if you’ll let me.”

Stunned, Tasha just stood there. He wanted to pretend to be the father of her baby? Why???

Hope and John walked into the kitchen. John rushed to the stove as Hope went to the cabinets by the dishwasher. He got the food out of the oven as she got the plates and silverware.

“We weren’t sure when you’d be here.” Hope said.

“Good thing ham and all the fixings keep well in the stove on warm.” John said as he set a foil covered deep dish baking pan on the stove top.

Looking over his shoulder at Tasha, “Do you eat ham?”

Tasha was Jewish because of her mother, but her mother’s family was very reformed… and liberated from the law. Her maternal grandparents would be kosher for the holidays, but her mother loved bacon…

“Yes, I eat ham.”

Kingston took Tasha’s hand, “While the table is being set, I’m going to show Tasha something upstairs.”

John looked at Hope and they stared at each other wondering if that was okay for them to do.

“Okay,” Hope said keeping her eyes locked with her husband.

With a sprint in his gait, Kingston pulled Tasha along as he led her up the nearest staircase. Gently, he whisked her down the hall to a room on the very end. The room appeared to belong to a teenage boy.

“My parents want to turn my old room into the nursery. This would be their first grandchild, so they want the baby to have somewhere to sleep when we need a break. And this room over time will just become the child’s room.”

“Your sister doesn’t have children?” Tasha wondered.

“Ah… no…” He said releasing her hand as he walked to the center of his room. He explained Genesis had ovarian cancer when she was in college. She survived without being able to keep her ovaries. Due to her medical history of cancer she wasn’t eligible to adopt from the state or from anywhere overseas.

So Tasha still didn’t understand his logic. Logos was still single and had plenty of time to become a father one day… And as sad as it was Genesis would never be a mother, why did Kingston want to pretend to be the father to Tasha’s unborn kid?

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be the son my parents pray for me to be…” He went on to say, after the day they went to the clinic together, he started to do the math. He knew women were two weeks pregnant at conception, due to his mother’s work with NYSAPP. When the nurse practitioner said Tasha was eight weeks and the fact they were together about five weeks prior to that point, the nurse would have said Tasha was seven weeks along not eight if he was the father.

The night before Thanksgiving Day, Giles was delivered the photos by currier. Giles wasn’t so much upset with Kingston for being with a woman, but the continued infidelity. Giles wanted commitment, marriage, kids, and a life together. Kingston couldn’t do that no matter how hard he tried. He loved Giles but he wasn’t at peace marrying him.

“I know it’s crazy to think like this… but I’m just afraid if I marry the man I love I’ll officially be alone…” Kingston made a paradoxical statement, but Tasha suspected his reason was religious. She waited in the stale silence for his explanation.

He cleared his throat and took Tasha’s hands as he led her to sit down on the edge of his twin bed with superhero bedding.

“As a boy, no one could tell me God wasn’t real. But then I started getting dreams about kissing boys… My first crush was on a boy…” Nervously, he began to pick at the loose skin around his thumb cuticle. “I wasn’t ever molested which is what most Christians think cause homosexuality… And my dad was the best dad ever…” Pausing, he ran his fingers through his hair, then rested his drooping forehead into the palm of his hand, as the elbow to that hand rested on his knee. “I did everything I could as a teenager. I kissed girl after girl. I went on dates. I lost my virginity to an older girl. Though it bothered me to sin, I thought having sex before I was married wasn’t as bad as being gay…”

Kingston said the Bible was clear. Sin was sin to God, but in the church, Christians considered some sins more forgivable than others. Homosexuality was a sin a person had to be totally delivered from to be totally forgiven, and total deliverance meant getting married in the one-man-one-woman-way.

When he came out in college, his church friends deserted him, and his home church excommunicated him. He had to find a reconciled church, which didn’t have the same teachings he grew up with. The sermons always made him feel good about himself and encouraged him to do good things, but the way the messages portrayed God presented a God that didn’t make any sense to Kingston. He stopped going to church because he couldn’t handle the inner turmoil. If God was the God he was raised to believe in, Kingston wasn’t getting into heaven, and if God was the God that the reconciled church preached about, Kingston would be better off following the devil.

At first, he felt free being away from the church, but then he just got depressed. His battle with anxiety got far worse than it was in high school and he needed to be on medication for it. When Giles went pro and asked for Kingston to move in with him, Kingston decided to live like there really wasn’t One God, and it worked.

But after six months of living together, Giles asked Kingston to marry him and immediately Kingston felt grieved by the thought and he didn’t know why. He asked if he could wait to give his answer. That’s when Kingston became unfaithful, and it was with a woman. He started telling himself he wasn’t really gay. That he had what it took to be with a woman. But then Kingston would suffer anxiety attack after anxiety attack with awful thoughts of suicide, and every time Giles pulled him out from the darkness, even forgiving him after Kingston’s adultery came to light.

And even this last time with cheating on Giles with Tasha, Giles had a plan… Giles was going to pay the photographer a bunch of money not to leak the photos. Giles wanted to pay Tasha off to say she was their surrogate and take custody of the child. All Kingston had to do was run away and elope with Giles.

With his face flushed red and tears dripping from his eyes, Kingston confessed to Tasha, “I told him I didn’t want to go to hell if God was real and that if I married him, there’d be no going back…” Kingston used his knuckles to wipe the tears from his eyes.

Tasha put her hand on his knee hoping to comfort him.

“He turned into a maniac. He called me awful things. He said horrible things about my family saying I listened to their organized-religion-brain-washing. He got so angry I thought he was going to kick me out, but he packed his things and left…”

That was the first time Giles left him. It was always Kingston breaking up with Giles because of the burden of guilt from his infidelity. But that was the first time Kingston was honest with Giles. In the past, he just told Giles he wasn’t ready to settle down yet.

“I didn’t want to live without him… I didn’t think I could…” He sniffled as he wiped his nose with his fingers. “I found every prescription pill in the place, poured them in a pile, and popped them one by one.”

Softly, he cupped Tasha’s face and caressed her cheeks with his thumbs, brushing them down and up continuously, “Then I thought of you and the baby and what the world would be thinking when those photos got out… And I didn’t want to leave you in a world of mess…”

“Your mom said you called 911 because of the baby.” Tasha said moving her head back out his hands’ embrace.

“I can’t remember why I really called 911.” He said standing up, “I just know that I want to have this baby with you and I know I can’t tell you what to do…”

“Look, I grew up in a divorced home, being split between two households… And I wouldn’t wish that on any kid.”

“We could live together. We don’t have to get married or ever be together like that.”

“What would happen if I do enter a relationship or you do?” Tasha questioned.

“Change happens, we’ll deal with it as that comes…”

“And I don’t follow any religion and I don’t believe imposing religion on any child.”

“Everyone believes in something and in the end, we’re all free to choose. Everyone in my family believes in God.”

“And because of that you lost the love of your life and nearly killed yourself…”

“If my family is wrong, it won’t matter when they die, but if I’m wrong, it will matter…”

Tasha never thought of it like that… She didn’t believe in a god. She didn’t believe in reincarnation. She was convinced nothing happened when everyone died. But what if hell was real and her failure to believe in God would put her there. She didn’t understand how a loving God could put someone in hell, an eternal furnace of torment, but maybe Kingston’s family could explain that.

“I don’t think I want to be a mom… I don’t know how to be one…” Tasha said with tears in her eyes.

Kingston kneeled at her feet, “I have no idea how to be a dad…”

The spirit of laughter hit both of them simultaneously and they laughed ridiculously.

Logos came into the room without asking, “Dinner is served,” he said. “What’s so funny?” He wondered.

Kingston took Tasha’s hand as he rose. He helped Tasha onto her feet. The two kept laughing as Kingston led Tasha out of his room.

Following behind them, Logos asked again, “What’s so funny?”

…New Year’s Eve… About a Year Later…

Tasha stood outdoors on the studio platform, bundled up in the freezing cold. The ball was about to drop in Time Square and she had to kill air time with her co-host until the next musical guest was ready to sing, down below, on the stage set up for the crowd in the square.

“Hadassah… That’s such a unique name…” Bryan, Tasha’s co-host, said.

“Yeah, Bible names aren’t so popular anymore.”

“How did you and Kingston decide on that name?”

Tasha smiled really big thinking about how to state the truth in the least offensive way. “We prayed about it and that’s the name we got afterwards.”

“Oh… I didn’t know you were spiritual. That’s beautiful… Well, um do you think Hadassah is fast asleep at home while you’re here to usher in the new year?”

“No… she never sleeps, but she’s not my problem tonight. She’s with her grandparents.”

“Your parents or Kingston’s?”

“Kingston’s…”

The floor director holds up his tablet which reads: Throw to the musical act: SLOPE.

“They love it too though, she is their first grandchild. Bryan, I don’t know about you, but I love our next musical guest!”

“Yes! Here’s Slope everyone!!!” Bryan shouted flamboyantly.

The minute the floor director cleared them, Tasha checked her microphone was off, and then she got in Bryan’s face.

“Stop putting all of my personal business out there. How would you like someone to do that to you?”

“I’m not the one who turned a gay man straight by having a baby with him. You must be some miracle-worker. How about we take five in the outhouse? I think I might want my third baby with you.”

“You need to really work on your insults…”

“I know you have poor gay-dar but in case you didn’t know, Kingston was never gay completely. He couldn’t have been if he left Giles Bordner for you.”

“We’re back in two,” the floor director said.

Both Tasha and Bryan got quiet quick knowing their mics were hot and could pick up every slight sound. They waited and read the directions on prompter. Tasha was to speak first. She was cued to mention Kingston. Views went up when things got tense talking about Tasha’s home life.

“We’re just about to usher in the New Year, and I’m little sad I’m other half isn’t here to share a kiss. Kingston, if you’re watching, I love you.”

“Awe… how cute? Todd, my boo, I love you too.” Bryan added.

The crew suddenly parted like the Red Sea and Kingston appeared holding sixth-month-old, Hadassah. Tasha wanted to gasp outraged but with the cameras were recording live around the world she made sure she was excited as she could possibly be.

“O my goodness!”

“O my Buddha!” Bryan gasped mimicking Tasha’s surprised expression.

Kingston stood in between the co-hosts. Tasha didn’t hesitate to take control of her daughter and place Hadassah within her own arms. Swaying side to side, which was the best way to keep the baby calm, Tasha mentally prepared to handle the line of questioning about Kingston’s sexuality.

“Kingston, not to put your business out there… but what is it like being married… to a woman…?”

“Well, I’ve never been married before Tasha,” he put his arm around her and reeled her closer to him, “I’ve never been in love with someone as much as I am in love with this woman. Being married is wonderful.”

“How come you never settled down with Giles? Didn’t he propose like three times?” Bryan badgered on.

“I wasn’t ready… and I never planned on ever marrying Tasha… but after Hadassah was born we grew closer spending so much time together, and in this positively unexpected way, I fell in love with her. And due to our newfound faith, we knew the best way to be together was through marriage.”

“Wow…” Bryan didn’t know what to say. If he said anything offensive about Tasha’s and Kingston’s faith, they could sue him for persecution. “BEAUTIFUL!”

“IT’S TIME FOR THE COUNTDOWN,” Tasha and Bryan said in unison as cued by the prompter.

They counted down from 10, when the 0 appeared, the ball dropped. Kingston kissed his bride of two months and their kiss had that same spark it did on their wedding day. The kiss was not the same as their first time. Simply because Kingston wasn’t the same man, because of his restored faith in God, he was a truly changed man.

Note from the Author:

Believe it or not, I always planned on putting Kingston with Tasha, but I originally wanted to take more time so you could see how they fell in love, how believing in God slowly transformed them into new creatures as scripture talks about.

I believe homosexuality is a bondage. Just like a liar, a fornicator, or anyone that is sinning is an enemy of God and will not make into eternity to dwell with God. I do believe Jesus delivers and saves and in Him freedom can be found. I say give Jesus the Messiah a chance and pray to God in His name, and I believe you will encounter the liberating love of the Father and comfort of the Holy Spirit, but you have to choose to do that.